Battleground Gujarathttp://www.openthemagazine.com/taxonomy/term/25967/feed
enBJP Prevails in Gujarat and Himachal Pradeshhttp://www.openthemagazine.com/article/battleground-gujarat/bjp-prevails-in-gujarat-and-himachal-pradesh
<p>At the end of a very bitter campaign season, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) has retained its hold over Gujarat and has wrested Himachal Pradesh from the Congress.</p>
<p>Three broad themes dominated the election in Gujarat. One, the rural versus urban split in that state. Two, caste versus religion as a dividing line. Finally, the personal appeal of Prime Minister Narendra Modi who led the campaign from the front for his party. During the campaign, and even earlier, much had been made of the rural distress in the state. Farmers were unhappy at the lack of remunerative prices for commodities such as cotton and the general lack of progress in rural Gujarat. In urban areas, too, matters were not considered rosy for BJP. Demonetisation and the implementation of the Goods and Services Tax (GST) were held as factors that had turned the urban electorate against it. Then, there was the issue of caste versus religious appeal with the Congress championing the former by tapping into resentment on part of various sections of the electorate including, most notably, Patidar unrest over demand for reservation.</p>
<p>In the end, these issues came to a naught. To be sure the BJP lost ground in rural Gujarat, especially in Saurashtra and its tally may come down from what it had in 2012. But whether viewed singly or in combination, these issues did not have the political traction the Congress had hoped they would. The prime minister’s appeal and his message have retained their potency over the years.</p>
<p>What made matters worse for the Congress is the historic decline in the party’s organization since 1969. As it stands, there is virtually no party cadre in Gujarat. The fashionable expression, “booth management” captures this failure vividly. It is a well-known result in political science that voting is an expensive exercise in terms of time expended in going to polling centres to exercise franchise. It is a large opportunity cost for poor voters who have to take time off from work to go and cast their votes. This “last mile” motivation requires a party organization that can do this important task. No amount of “narrative management” can obviate the need for dedicated party workers.</p>
<p>Finally, the Congress’ calculated use of religion—Rahul Gandhi’s more than two dozen, well-publicized, temple visits in Gujarat—was meant to blunt the “silent” edge that BJP enjoyed on this score. As the results show, this has not worked. Historically, this is a strategy that has not worked well for the Congress party across India.</p>
<p>With the control of Himachal Pradesh, the BJP will have governments in 19 states. The Congress now rules just two major states, Punjab and Karnataka. It has been a while since a national party exercised such dominance in India on its own.</p>
<img src="http://www.openthemagazine.com/sites/default/files/styles/large/public/public%3A/Narendra-Modi_0.jpg?itok=E2YYnR5X" /><div>BY: Siddharth Singh</div><div>Node Id: 23760</div>Mon, 18 Dec 2017 09:28:45 +0000vijayopen23760 at http://www.openthemagazine.comThe Moment of Reckoninghttp://www.openthemagazine.com/article/battleground-gujarat/the-moment-of-reckoning
<p>WINDS SWEEP CHOTILA, a temple- town in Surendranagar district of Gujarat’s Saurashtra region, which is otherwise too humid for comfort. The trek up the hill to the shrine erected for Chamunda Devi is fatiguing, but on the morning of September 27th, Rahul Gandhi covered these 1,000 steps at a breakneck pace, taking only 15 minutes. Children run around and shopkeepers are busy selling wares—from Bollywood movie CDs to trinkets embossed with images of the goddess, a favourite of the numerically preponderant community of Kolis who live in this area known for its ceramic products.</p>
<p>Standing below a huge poster of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Madhav Koli, who is from a “nearby village”, says he makes it a point these days to bring his wife and two teenage boys here every Sunday to offer prayers to the Devi. He also finds nothing unusual about the Congress leader visiting the temple. He has read in the newspapers that he had visited other temples as well, among them the Khodal Dham temple in Rajkot’s Kagvad village, which is considered holy by the rich Leva Patels; Dasi Jeevan Mandir, an important centre of worship for Dalits and Buddhists; Jalaram temple; and the Somnath Temple, one of the twelve jyotirlinga shrines of Shiva. “I don’t find anything odd about such visits. All politicians should visit temples and do good things for India,” says this 40-year-old, adding he is not happy about the “financial situation” in the family. “I would need to earn more to give my children better education when they reach college-going age. We visit the temple also because going elsewhere would be more expensive, and I can’t afford that,” he states, though he refuses to divulge which party he will vote for in Gujarat’s Assembly elections due on December 9th and 14th. “It is a personal decision, after all,” he says, and walks away grinning.</p>
<p>SURESHBHAI, A MECHANICAL shop owner in Limdi, an hour’s drive from Chotila, pokes fun at Rahul’s temple- hopping ways, calling it ‘<em>naatak</em>’, an eyewash. He admits he doesn’t make a paisa more than he earned two years ago, but then “drastic steps” are required to check ill-gotten money in the system and non-payment of taxes. “The BJP may not be the best, but who else should I vote for?” he asks. He says he is a Kshatriya, a Darbar by caste, and he owes his allegiance to Prime Minister Modi, not any party. “He is on the right track,” he says, and asks around who is the BJP candidate for the Limdi seat, which was wrested by the BJP from the Congress in a 2013 bypoll. Nobody answers his question. As we drive off, a group of young adults sitting around silently while Sureshbhai spoke suddenly get up and shout, “Modi Modi Modi”. The chant soon fades away.</p>
<p>Like many states, in Gujarat, too, local pride runs deep. So do provincial affinities in politics. That perhaps explains why Congress spinmeisters thought it wise that Rahul Gandhi visit the state’s famous temples; skip the thorny subject of the 2002 Gujarat riots; speak of the sacrifices of the likes of Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel and the Mahatma and not of his own family; and eschew anything that would go against the typical Gujarati mindset. Author and IIT-Gandhinagar Professor Rita Kothari explains the logic from her perspective as a long-time ‘inhabitant’ of the state and whose parents had settled there after leaving Sindh during Partition: “[Congress leaders] are not talking of Muslims. Because that vocabulary had made them appear anti-Gujarat. It sort of reinforced a view that they have always been against us [Gujaratis]. This time, the Congress didn’t want to [make that error].” A close aide of Rahul Gandhi also admits that the party has taken special care not to hurt the Gujarati <em>asmita</em> (pride).</p>
<p>For the BJP, the biggest asset is Modi himself, who appears to have transcended the limitations of his party; to take him on in his home turf has been seen as an impossible task. Concedes a Congress person close to Rahul: “It is their citadel, but we hope to make good gains in the Saurashtra region of the state and in North Gujarat, besides other pockets.” It is here that Milan Vaishnav finds a rationale in the Congress’ change of tack to not bring up the Gujarat carnage of 2002. This noted author and director and a senior fellow in the South Asia Program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace who has long studied the electoral behaviour of Indian voters suggests there is an internal debate within the Congress over how much emphasis should be placed on 2002. “The verdict seems to be that if mobilising [opinion] on the Gujarat riots has not worked for the past 15 years, it is unlikely to work today— as for many Gujaratis, the riots are a distant memory.”</p>
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<p>“While I sympathise with the Patel community, I have no doubt OBCs and lower castes will protest any casteist axis Congress tries to build” - Dharmendra Pradhan, Union Minister for Petroleum and Natural Gas</p>
</blockquote>
<p>For his part, Modi has consistently followed what political scientists and politicians such as Yogendra Yadav and others brand as a ‘negative campaign’. The BJP, having ruled the state for over two decades, has been blamed for the rural distress here. The BJP had attacked Rahul Gandhi for colluding with ‘casteist forces’ to ensure electoral gains. Dharmendra Pradhan, a Union minister who has worked closely with party president Amit Shah in various elections in the past, tells <em>Open</em> in Ahmedabad that a counter- polarisation of casteists to these “reactionary tactics” is sure to happen. While he says he sympathises with the concerns of the Patel community, who have been a traditional vote bank of the BJP in the state and had helped the Hindu nationalist party break Congress dominance a couple of decades ago, he has no doubt whatsoever that OBCs and lower castes will be up in arms against any casteist axis that the Congress tries to build. Like Amit Shah, who is micromanaging the polls in the state, Pradhan also hopes that voters will reject the Congress for “apeing” the BJP in its campaign. Finance Minister Arun Jaitley had earlier questioned the rival party’s soft- Hindutva posture, asking why there was any need of a copycat version while there was the original available to the electorate.</p>
<p>Local BJP leaders expect this kind of counter-polarisation in Radhanpur, where 40-year-old Alpesh Thakor, an OBC leader and a new entrant to the Congress, is contesting from.</p>
<p>I meet BJP’s Lavingji Thakor, a former Congress leader who had once vacated this same seat for Shankersinh Vaghela when the latter went on to become Chief Minister in the late 1990s. Mustachioed and friendly, his popularity is not a patch on that of Alpesh, who made a name for himself in his community with an anti- alcoholism crusade. Though the BJP has not lost the Radhanpur seat since 1998, in the last Assembly poll, the BJP’s Nagarji Thakor defeated the Congress candidate Bhavsinhji Thakor by a margin of only 3,834 votes. Local leaders say the 60,000-plus strong Thakor votes will be split this time, thanks to a contest between two politicians of the same community. Besides, of the nearly 258,000 voters in all, other OBCs and lower castes of the Chaudhary, Rajput, Rabari and Prajapati communities, among others, make up two-thirds of the electorate in this constituency, one of the four seats in Patan district. The Congress hopes that BJP’s Lavingji Thakor, who has a penchant for laughing loudly at his own jokes, will be no match for Alpesh. Lavingji himself says, “The fathers [among Thakors] are with me and the sons are with [Alpesh].” That the constituency has relatively few Patel votes could be a disadvantage for Alpesh, who is seen as an upstart even by many local Congress leaders.</p>
<p>SPEAKING ABOUT THE latest survey on voting trends in Gujarat conducted by CSDS-Lok Niti, Yogendra Yadav tells <em>Open</em> that most analysts mistake the impact of the Patidar agitation in terms of Patel disgruntlement alone. Reviewing the results of the survey, the final tracker poll by the CSDS-Lok Niti team, Yadav argues that a counter polarisation among other OBCs against Patidars is unlikely because the “agitation has more to do with rural and farmer unrest than about any caste or about reservation”. In his analysis, “It marks a large-scale protest against unemployment and hardship among various groups in the state.” According to him, the positive impact of a section of Patidars (75 per cent of whom were pro-BJP in the last election, a figure that has now fallen to 45 per cent) shifting their loyalty to the Congress is that Dalits and Muslims will be able to vote for the challenger party. “Which means Patidars would offer such pro-Congress voters an umbrella—or a sense of security—for voting in this election.” There is a perception that some vulnerable groups in the state have typically stayed away from ballot booths, a claim hotly contested by the BJP. An earlier CSDS-Lok Niti survey found in August that the BJP had an over 30-percentage-point lead over the Congress in the state. By October, the gap fell to a six percentage points, with the Congress having campaigned tirelessly against the Gujarat development model, aided by the slogan ‘Vikas Gando Thayo Chhe’ (development has gone crazy).</p>
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<p>“Our work is based on the data we get. This time round we have picked up clear indications of a Congress revival in the state” - Sanjay Kumar, director, Centre for the Study of Developing Societies</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Yadav, however, isn’t an admirer of the recent Hindutvaesque stance of the Congress. He says that with the sole exception of Sonia Gandhi’s comment in an earlier poll in which she referred to Modi without naming him, as ‘<em>maut ka saudagar</em>’, the Congress has always failed to raise the issue of the 2002 violence to any effect in Gujarat. He feels it is because the nature of the Congress worker in the state is not significantly different from that of a BJP worker. “So having failed to highlight the failings and agenda of the BJP government for 15 years, the Congress was left with a short-term agenda of playing the soft Hindutva card.” Modi was Chief Minister from 2001 to 2014 until he became Prime Minister.</p>
<p>While some BJP functionaries have dismissed the CSDS-Lok Niti survey as bogus, R Jagannathan, editorial director of <em>Swarajya</em>, a monthly publication, argues the BJP should be worried about its poll prospects: “The Congress is far ahead in the state’s 98 rural constituencies, and it is only in the 84 urban seats that the BJP has some chance of holding on to its seats. But it can’t count on this, for there is a subterranean feel that the voter wants to give the BJP a rap on the knuckles this time, both for taking him for granted and for the pain inflicted on small businesses. It may be comeuppance time.”</p>
<p>Amit Shah, the architect of several glorious poll triumphs of the BJP, however, has stuck to his prediction that the BJP will win close to 150 seats in the 182-member state Assembly.</p>
<p>Speaking on the phone from Surat, after witnessing a massive rally on December 3rd addressed by 24-year-old Hardik Patel (who is originally from Viramgam in Surendranagar district), a city- based manager in a diamond manufacturing firm tells <em>Open</em> that he senses “something is changing in Gujarat”. He says, “A set of factors, including rising unemployment, farmer woes and a raft of other factors, including the trampling of agitations and anti- Dalit atrocities, etcetera, are coming to the fore as election issues”.</p>
<p>Like Hardik Patel, who evokes admiration and commands a large following in places like Mehsana and nearby districts, especially among members of his community and also among a few other OBCs and farmers, Jignesh Mevani, too, has emerged as a prominent leader, particularly among Dalits, following the 2016 Una agitation in the wake of a video clip that surfaced of several Dalits being thrashed mercilessly for skinning a dead cow.</p>
<p>Dalits protested by not removing carcasses lying on the streets and came up with slogans such as ‘Gai ki Poonchch Tum Rakho, Humein Hamari Zameen Doh’ (Keep the cow’s tail, give us our land), which caught popular imagination. Mevani is contesting polls as an independent from the Vadgam reserved seat in the Banaskantha district of northern Gujarat. While Dalits form just over 7 per cent of the state’s population, Patidars make up close to 14 per cent, and Thakors are estimated to be around 22 per cent. Tribals form close to 15 per cent of Gujarat, and Muslims 9-10 per cent. Patidars were at the forefront of the mid-1980s agitation that finally broke the back of the Kshatriya Harijan Adivasi Muslim (KHAM) formula championed by the Congress during the 1980s, the last time it had dominance in the state.</p>
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<p>“The typical Gujarati is inclined towards entrepreneurship, not a salaried job. The angst is that this government is not bothered about small businesses” - Rita Kothari, professor, IIT Gandhinagar</p>
</blockquote>
<p>The Congress is hoping to revive its lost glory in Gujarat by appealing to Dalits and a section of the OBCs farmers, small and medium businessmen, Patidars and so on. At a smaller level, health workers and textile and diamond traders had organised protest marches in the state following demonetisation last November. These are people who feel largely left out by the Gujarat model of development. While economists of the stature of Jagdish Bhagwati and Arvind Panagariya had called this model a metaphor for growth-oriented economic policies, as opposed to the redistribution-oriented Kerala model, the Gujarat experience has veered more towards capital-intensive industries and less towards those that employ labour in large numbers. As a result, creation of jobs has become slower than expected. This model, its critics say, favours the well-off sections of society and big business rather than strugglers and small-and-medium enterprises.</p>
<p>A section of academics and political scientists are still unsure of how such discontent will translate into votes for the Congress. Professor Kothari says jobs are not a major concern in Gujarat. She hastens to add she is not undermining the fact that unemployment is for real, but the typical Gujarati is inclined towards entrepreneurship, not a salaried job. The angst at the moment among a large section is that this government is not bothered about small businesses. “Basically, all that [talk] about development strikes a hollow note now even to the ardent BJP supporter,” she says.</p>
<p>Does that mean there is cynicism about Modi himself? “I don’t think so,” she states.</p>
<p>Varnasi Singh, who works as a postman but has built a two-storey home, discloses that he is Darbar Kshatriya who commands a lot of respect in his neighbourhood in Kadu Village, located in Lakhtar Taluka of Surendranagar district. He invites me to his home and serves tea. He says change has to be a constant. And repeats the statement a number of times, until I interject and ask him to elaborate. He smiles and reiterates, “<em>Parivartan hona chaahiye</em> (change should happen)”. One gets the impression he will keep saying it for hours, until he is asked another question. Then he opens up to say, “I had stopped voting. This time I will, and there are a lot of injustices that happen here, including illegal activities. Therefore I must tell you that we are slightly disappointed with the government.” He does not elaborate. Before I leave, he says, “You shouldn’t forget that we are Padmavati’s people, the Kshatriyas. We have many things to be angry about.” His cryptic remarks are in keeping with the unspoken motto of the average Gujarati voter this year: ‘Voice not whom you will vote for’.</p>
<p>In Rajkot, Raghubhai, who doesn’t wish to disclose his surname, believes that GST—which Rahul Gandhi has scoffed at as ‘Gabbar Singh Tax’, though it was his party that initiated this reform—and demonetisation are no longer burning issues for people. The businessman concedes that there is a perception that BJP’s Chief Minister Vijay Rupani is a mere rubber stamp. “But so what? After all, it is the party that will handle its government,” he justifies, “Besides, Modiji will always pay close attention to issues in his home state.” Other chats with voters from the Kutch region of the state reveal similar sentiments.</p>
<p>Sanjay Kumar, who is among the three people who oversaw the CSDS-Lok Niti survey, disapproves of such empty rhetoric. He also admits that his team made a major mistake in the Uttar Pradesh Assembly polls. “We might make a mistake again, but we do our work based on the data we get. Why is it that nobody is talking about our past work?” This time round, he adds, his team has picked up clear indications of a Congress revival in the state.</p>
<p>Meanwhile, there are others who feel the Congress is making a wilful error by opting for a campaign with Hindu overtones. Says London School of Economics Professor Sumantra Bose, a keen observer of the political strategies of India’s Grand Old Party: “My view is that the Congress’ soft-Hindutva campaign is both morally misguided and strategically misjudged. But it is an error that party has made before, in times when it was not yet facing the existential crisis it is now. Rajiv Gandhi’s allowing the Rama Mandir <em>shilanyas</em> in Ayodhya in 1989 and then calling for the establishment of Rama Rajya in India at an election rally there in 1989, Sonia Gandhi terming Hinduism the guarantee of secularism in India in 1999, etcetera.” Referring to the recent rise in Rahul’s popularity on social media platforms, Bose says he believes such an effect can be created, or improved upon, by engaging suitably qualified professionals in that field. “But that’s not a substitute for real achievements and—most critically in this case—genuine leadership capacity.”</p>
<p>Modi, whose social-media presence is in sync with his electoral gains, has hit the ground running and launched into massive tirades against the Congress for its deeply entrenched dynastic culture. He has also targeted the rival party for its alleged denigration of Gujarati leaders, including Sardar Patel, in the past. The chief BJP campaigner has also alleged the Congress is trying to stall the construction of a Rama temple in Ayodhya, though the rival party’s stance on the matter is rather more complex. But then, Modi knows that his local-leader credentials and Hindu alpha male persona are irresistible to Gujarati voters.</p>
<img src="http://www.openthemagazine.com/sites/default/files/styles/large/public/public%3A/Reckoning1.jpg?itok=dAkMrJ8J" /><div>BY: Ullekh NP</div><div>Node Id: 23727</div>Thu, 07 Dec 2017 17:33:13 +0000vijayopen23727 at http://www.openthemagazine.comVijay Rupani: In Modi’s Shadowhttp://www.openthemagazine.com/article/battleground-gujarat/vijay-rupani-in-modi-s-shadow
<p>AS BJP PRESIDENT Amit Shah’s convoy leaves Chief Minister Vijay Rupani’s residence in Gandhinagar, the latter prepares for a string of interviews. Sitting in the office that Narendra Modi had occupied for 13 years, Rupani reels out by-now-familiar answers to predictable questions. It has been over three years since Modi vacated this space to become Prime Minister, but almost nothing in sight has been re- arranged. “When I used to come here during the time when Modi<em>ji</em> was Chief Minister, this room was the same, except for some of these things which I got as gifts,” says Rupani, a BJP leader from the Saurashtra region, pointing to artefacts on a shelf behind his seat. “The Buddha statue and this picture of [the proposed] Statue of Unity have been there since [Modi’s] time.”</p>
<p>The five-foot Buddha carved in sheesham just outside the door and the Statue of Unity image modelled on Sardar Patel inside the office were both installed in 2013, when Modi was Chief Minister. They speak of Modi’s two big dream projects for the state: building a grand Buddha monument and the world’s tallest statue. In September, the Prime Minister had visited the site for the statue at Sadhu Bet, near the Sardar Sarovar Dam, with Union Minister Nitin Gadkari, the Chief Minister and his predecessor Anandiben Patel in tow. In June, Modi had spoken of putting up the Buddha monument in north Gujarat’s Dev Ni Mori village, where ruins were found of an ancient Buddhist monastery.</p>
<p>The Prime Minister also looms large over the BJP re-election campaign, his rallies having taken centre-stage in the final week. Since this is his home turf, he sets the agenda and tone. This is a cause for comfort, if anything, for Rupani. “So far, for ten years, UPA governments in Delhi went against Gujarat. It hurt the state. Now Gujarat’s son is in Delhi, so the state is benefiting,” he says, “With BJP in the state and at the Centre, Gujarat’s development process will move forward very fast. So the distance only has a positive impact.” Each time he is asked about the ‘absence’ of Modi, who was at the helm in the state for the past three Assembly elections, the soft-spoken leader repeats the party’s hope of making gains this December— that under Modi as Chief Minister, the BJP got 127 seats, and now with him as Prime Minister, it will get 150-plus.</p>
<p>Appointed Chief Minister 15 months ago to replace Anandiben Patel, Rupani has tried to pick up the threads from where Modi left. “I have said earlier too that this is Vikramaditya’s throne. Whoever sits here will do justice,” he says, “Modiji went through a lot of struggle for 13 years. Today, it is not like that. I feel proud that I could do what Modiji was doing. I will continue in his footsteps.”</p>
<p>Neither Rupani nor political pundits in the state expect the vacuum left by Modi to be filled. If it’s not the Prime Minister, then it’s the BJP chief from whom the Chief Minister takes advice on “crucial matters relating to the state”, as he puts it. “Modi is here every other day,” observes Achyut Yagnik, honorary secretary of the Centre for Social Knowledge and Action in Ahmedabad, “He and Shah call the shots. Rupani was a Rajkot leader who was superimposed on Gujarat after Anandiben quit. He is banking on Modi’s appeal [to retain power].”</p>
<p>Political analyst Shirish Kashikar, however, says in the year-and-a-quarter that Rupani has had in office, he took around 100 decisions on development schemes and reforms. “He took forward the programmes that Modiji had initiated,” he says, “If a soft image is considered negative, that is his only negative.” While Rupani balances the equation between the party and the government, he adds, his deputy Nitin Patel handles administrative nitty-gritties. In Kashikar’s analysis, having a Chief Minister who started as a grassroots worker in Rajkot would help shore up BJP support in Saurashtra, where it has been relatively weak. Rupani is said to be popular among the region’s Leuva and Kadava Patidars, among others. As a member of the Jain community that forms less than 1 per cent of Gujarat’s population, Rupani is seen as a caste-neutral leader in a state which is witnessing a Patidar agitation for OBC status to get reservations in college admissions and government jobs. “He got Gujarat’s throne as a fallout of that agitation,” says sociologist Gaurang Jani, a lecturer at Gujarat University, Ahmedabad.</p>
<p>Rupani dubs as Congress agents the three young caste leaders who have been rallying opposition to BJP rule within their respective groups—Hardik Patel of Patidars, Alpesh Thakur of OBCs and Jignesh Mewani of Dalits. “We have been saying it was a Congress conspiracy and today all three have come out openly [for that party],” says Rupani, “Their movements are in the name of the people, but they are cheating people. Hardik promised Patidars reservations, but Congress has no constitutionally tenable formula. Alpesh had said he will not join politics and will work for society; he also went to Congress and exposed himself. Jignesh carried out an agitation in the name of Dalits till the UP elections. Afterwards, he also went off. So all of them are exposed.”</p>
<blockquote>
<p>I believe people will rise above caste and vote on the basis of development. It is the golden period for the state. In the next five years, the state will witness a lot of it</p>
</blockquote>
<p>The Chief Minister’s throat is sore, but this does not stop him from lashing out at the Congress, particularly its new chief Rahul Gandhi. Asked if the Grand Old Party is trying to replicate its old ‘KHAM’ formula—which won it 149 of the state’s 182 seats in 1985—by wooing Kshatriyas, Harijans, Adivasis and Muslims, Rupani is dismissive, saying the people of Gujarat realise that the Congress is indulging in caste politics as a short cut. “Times have changed,” he says, “Even Muslims are angry with Congress, which has looked at them only from the prism of a vote bank. They got left behind because of Congress. Election results of the past three years, like in UP where the media is saying Muslims have also voted BJP, show they are angry with Congress.”</p>
<p>He brushes off Rahul Gandhi’s temple hopping in the state as an election show: “Narendrabhai came to Akshardham and he followed him. But in Delhi, just 5 km away from his office is an Akshardham temple, but he has never gone there. People know that because of elections here, he is going from one temple to another. It has no meaning.”</p>
<p>Modi and Shah, the BJP’s lead campaigners, have also made Gandhi the target of their anti-Congress tirade. At a rally in Dharampur, Modi referred to Gandhi’s elevation as Congress chief as “Aurangzeb raj”, a barb that followed a comment by Congress leader Mani Shankar Aiyar, who had asked, “When Aurangzeb came in place of Shah Jahan, did any election happen?” At a gathering in Veraval in Gir-Somnath, Shah highlighted the BJP’s local poll wins in Amethi, the Gandhi pocketborough in Uttar Pradesh.</p>
<p>Rupani speaks animatedly of Modi’s connect with people at large. “I learnt from him never to allow anti-incumbency to set in. He used to say one should look at things from all angles. ‘Sab ka Saath, Sab ka Vikas’ means [we have to] think about everyone, all sections of society.” Recently, he says, Modi told him Gujaratis wanted value-based politics and that aspiration had to be met.</p>
<p>The BJP slogan of ‘Hu Vikas Chhu, Hu Chhu Gujarat’ (I am development, I am Gujarat) gives Rupani the confidence that its development story will trump narrow appeals. “I believe that people will rise above caste and vote on the basis of development. It is the golden period for the state,” he says, “In the next five years, the state will witness a lot of it.”</p>
<p>Rupani contends that traders, who account for a large proportion of the electorate, are no longer disgruntled with the BJP over the Goods and Services Tax (GST) regime. “The last GST Council has addressed their concerns. All the chambers [of commerce] have welcomed decisions taken by the Council,” he says. “Whenever a new system comes in, it takes four-five months for implementation. There are teething problems.”</p>
<p>He also refutes claims of Dalit anger against the BJP in the wake of the flogging in Una of Dalit men for skinning a dead cow. “In December end, after Una, there were elections in over 10,000 gram panchayats. We won 80 per cent of the elections and we won in Samatiyaragaun, where Una is located,” he says, “Those who were involved in the crime are in jail and the state government has taken tough measures.”</p>
<p>While Rupani is fighting a faceless foe, with the Congress refraining from projecting a chief ministerial candidate, in Rajkot West, a seat once held by Modi, he is up against the rival party’s Indranil Rajyaguru, who shifted from Rajkot East to take him on. His poll posters in this constituency, however, are dominated by images of Modi and Shah.</p>
<p>If he retains office, Rupani’s priorities would be to double farmer incomes in five years, ensure they get minimum support prices for their produce, and get Narmada water to Saurashtra, Kutch and North Gujarat. He has laid the foundation stone to lay a pipeline from Macchu dam to fill Aji dam with the river’s water. At a rally in Morbi, Modi recently hailed the Narmada project as a major BJP achievement, while criticising the Congress for taking credit for schemes like providing hand pumps.</p>
<p>The Chief Minister has had to face Congress allegations of wrongdoing after the stockmarket regulator SEBI imposed a penalty on his Hindu Undivided Family for allegedly manipulative share trading in a firm called Sarang Chemicals. “Congress has no real issues, either against BJP or me, which is why it is making false allegations,” says Rupani, “I bought a single stock of Rs 63,000 from this company in 2009. I took delivery through the stock exchange. It came into my demat account. For 18 months I kept the share and then sold it at a loss of Rs 28,000. In that, what speculation and what profit? The entire thing was scrapped... but Rahul Gandhi doesn’t understand what is turnover, profit, loss.” He also wants the Congress leader to explain how he arrived at a figure of 3 million people jobless in the state.</p>
<p>The Chief Minister, who had stopped a speech midway for the <em>aazaan</em> from a local mosque during his Gujarat Gaurav Yatra earlier this year, says the BJP believes in ‘<em>sarva dharma samabhav</em>’ (equal regard for all faiths) and justice for all. The rival’s Muslim outreach is appeasement politics, he holds. As with his policies, the contrast he makes is well in line with the views of the man in the spotlight, Narendra Modi.</p>
<img src="http://www.openthemagazine.com/sites/default/files/styles/large/public/public%3A/VijayRupani.jpg?itok=cd_DO4HP" /><div>BY: Amita Shah</div><div>Node Id: 23714</div>Thu, 07 Dec 2017 10:27:55 +0000vijayopen23714 at http://www.openthemagazine.com